Numbers 18:25

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

EXPOSITORY (ENGLISH BIBLE)

Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers

(25) And the Lord spake unto Moses . . . —The law respecting the Levitical dues was given to Aaron, and communicated through him to the people. The law respecting the tithe which the Levites were to give to the priests, in which Aaron’s family were directly concerned, was communicated to Moses, and by him to the Levites.

Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary

18:20-32 As Israel was a people not to be numbered among the nations, so Levi was a tribe to be distinguished from the rest. Those who have God for their Inheritance and their Portion for ever, ought to look with holy contempt and indifference upon the possessions of this world. The Levites were to give God his dues out of their tithes, as well as the Israelites out of their increase. See, in ver. 31, the way to have comfort in all our worldly possessions, so as to bear no sin by reason of them. 1. We must be sure that what we have is got honestly and in the service of God. That meat is best eaten which is first earned; but if any will not work, neither shall he eat, 2Th 3:10. 2. We must be sure that God has his dues out of it. We have the comfort of our substance, when we have honoured the Lord with it. Ye shall bear no sin by reason of it, when ye have heaved the best from it. We should give alms of such things as we have, that all may be holy and comfortable to us.

Barnes' Notes on the Bible

Here the tithes (and in Numbers 18:26 the priestly tithes) are to be dedicated to their purpose by the ceremony of heaving them to the Lord. The tithes, being solemnly set apart for sacred purposes, became virtually a heave-offering, like the gifts for the tabernacle Exodus 25:2.

Jamieson-Fausset-Brown Bible Commentary

23. But the Levites shall do the service of the tabernacle of the congregation: they shall bear their iniquity—They were to be responsible for the right discharge of those duties that were assigned to them, and consequently to bear the penalty that was due to negligence or carelessness in the guardianship of the holy things.

Matthew Poole's Commentary

No text from Poole on this verse.

Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible

And the Lord spake unto Moses,.... And not unto Aaron, because a tithe out of the tithe was to be given to Aaron, as Aben Ezra observes, and it was not so proper that he should have this order to deliver to the Levites, in which he and his sons were so much concerned, and therefore it was given to Moses to acquaint them of it:

saying; as follows.

Geneva Study Bible

And the LORD spake unto Moses, saying,

EXEGETICAL (ORIGINAL LANGUAGES)

Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges

25–32. A further payment to the priests. The tithe of the crops belongs so entirely to the Levites that it is considered a source of property from which they in turn must pay a tithe to the priests.

Pulpit Commentary

Verse 25. - And the Lord spake unto Moses. This part of the instruction alone is addressed to Moses, probably because it determined a question as between priests and Levites to the advantage of the former, and therefore would not have come well from Aaron. Numbers 18:25

Keil and Delitzsch Biblical Commentary on the Old Testament

Appropriation of the Tithe. - Numbers 18:26. When the Levites took (received) from the people the tithe assigned them by Jehovah, they were to lift off from it a heave-offering for Jehovah, a tithe of the tithe for Aaron the priest (i.e., for the priesthood; see at Numbers 18:20). "Your heave-offering shall be reckoned to you as the corn of the threshing-floor, and the fulness (see Exodus 22:28) of the wine-press," i.e., according to Numbers 18:30, as the revenue of the threshing-floor and wine-press; that is to say, as corn and wine which they had reaped themselves.